Restraint needed on, off court

Friday

Feb 14, 2014 at 6:00 AM

Earlier this week, Marcus Smart, a highly-touted player on the Oklahoma State basketball team, shoved a man who berated him in the waning seconds of his team's loss to Texas Tech, for whom the man was cheering.

Most in the media acknowledged that the man, a 50-year-old, 1983 Texas Tech graduate and a rabid fan of the basketball program, behaved inappropriately when he called Mr. Smart a "piece of crap." They, however, saved their harshest criticism for the player.

Stephen A. Smith, who stars on ESPN's "First Take," a cable sports talk show, probably summed up the general sentiment of those who believed the kid was in the wrong. There is no excuse for an athlete putting their hands on a fan, he said.

"You are not looking out for Marcus Smart, if you try to explain away his action," Mr. Smith said.

Mr. Smith is right, of course, but it is a scary truth, because it speaks of an upside-down world, one in which it would appear that the burden of showing restraint, wisdom and understanding is heavier on the young than on the old.

A 19-year-old kid, his team on a losing skid and his season on the line, loses his emotion and shoves a 50-year-old who was belittling him, and for that one moment of indiscretion, he could have tanked his future.

Yet, what are we to make of a grown man calling a college kid a piece of crap, at a basketball game? Where is the honor and the decency in that? Where is the accountability?

But should we really be surprised? Isn't this 50-year-old a symptom of one of the major pains in our society today — adults shelving all pretenses of maturity and wisdom, adults acting not like children, because that would not be so bad, but like idiots?

Today, we kick kids out of school for drawing pictures of knives, and for saying the wrong things on Facebook, but adults are allowed to run rampant with their visual and verbal threats.

Remember back in 2010, when Scott Brown was elected with big support from tea party donors, because they believed his Senate vote would help kill Obamacare? Well, during a rally in front of the Capitol to press their case that year, tea party members held a sign that read, "Warning: If Brown can't stop it, Browning can," alluding, of course, to using a Browning firearm to get their way.

Fast forward to last month when we were subjected to a video of Congressman Michael Grimm, in which the Republican from New York threatened a reporter. Mr. Grimm, who is under investigation by the feds for campaign donation and other financial irregularities, was asked by the reporter to comment on the investigation.

Apparently feeling the question was off limits, he threatened to throw the reporter "off this (expletive) balcony." A former marine, Mr. Grimm also told the reporter that "I'll break you in half. Like a boy."

A tea party darling, who is backed by Sarah Palin and others of that group's brightest bulbs, Mr. Grimm probably enhanced rather than endangered his career as a tea party candidate with such bullying tactics. Individuals like him have become the modern-day "adults in the room." Instead of being shunned, they are being recruited for office.

Who can forget how these modern-day adults threw a temper tantrum and shut down the government last year, bringing misery to millions of Americans.

Yes, we should keep telling young people to be calm and collected under duress, and not to act like the adults in Congress, or like those in the stands at basketball games. But, really, we shouldn't be too surprised if they don't heed us all of the time.